NewsWrap
for the week ending January 15, 2000
(As broadcast on This Way Out program #616, distributed 01-17-00)
[Written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to Graham Underhill, Chris Ambidge,
Martin Rice, Brian Nunes, Jason Lin, Rex Wockner, Greg Gordon & Lucia
Chappelle]
Anchored by Cindy Friedman and Greg Gordon
Geoff Hoon: "With effect from today, homosexuality will no longer be a bar
to service in Britain's armed forces."
That was Defence Minister Geoff Hoon speaking to the House of Commons on
January 12th.
This leaves Turkey as the only member of the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization with a complete ban on military service by gays and lesbians --
all the others have more liberal policies than the U.S.' so-called "Don't
Ask, Don't Tell."
Hoon went on to describe the new code of conduct that will apply to all
servicemembers regardless of their sexual orientation, which Hoon called
"essentially a private matter for the individual". Now the British military
will have no interest in its members' private off-duty relationships. The
new code is modeled on the Australian Defence Forces'. Military leaders are
expected to consider the question, "Have the actions or behavior of an
individual adversely impacted, or are they likely to impact on, the
efficiency or operational effectiveness of the service?" A list of behaviors
with the potential to do that includes displays of affection which may offend
others, over-familiarity with another servicemembers' partner, unwanted
verbal or physical sexual attention, and exploitation of subordinates. There
is no ban on touching, as there has been on Royal Navy ships, but sexual
behavior on duty or in public will result in disciplinary action.
Hoon had previously announced that no bullying or harassment would be
tolerated.
The end of the ban also marks the end of a freeze on a number legal
proceedings by and against the Ministry of Defence. Pending military
discharge proceedings for homosexuality will be dropped. A number of gays
and lesbians who had been discharged for homosexuality are now being invited
to re-enlist.
Naturally gay and lesbian groups welcomed the long-awaited lifting of the
ban, which was won in the European Court of Human Rights in a lawsuit by four
gay and lesbian former servicemembers. But Britain's direct action group
OutRage! warned that it would take training to challenge homophobic attitudes
and make the military a safer environment for gays and lesbians.
Conservative Party Members of Parliament denounced the change in military
policy, primarily on the grounds that those serving in the military didn't
want it. They couldn't stop the change because it didn't require any
legislation, but they did indicate that they would make it a campaign issue,
promising to reinstate the ban if they regain power.
Like Britain's Conservative Party, the small Scottish Conservative Party
has been resisting plans to repeal Section 28, that notorious Thatcher-era
prohibition against "promotion of homosexuality" by schools and local
governments. The British Government and the Scottish Executive are each
determined to dump the never-enforced law this year, because it's been shown
to stop educators both from supporting lesbigay students and from intervening
to stop homophobic harassment. But Scotland's Catholic Church and some other
religious groups have been vocal in their demands to retain Section 28,
because they genuinely fear that without it, schools will be flooded with
pornographic materials. They solicited wealthy Brian Souter, executive chair
of the Stagecoach Holdings transportation company, and this week he said he
would contribute up to 1-million-pounds for a media campaign to keep the law.
While this might be commonplace in the U.S., it is not the way things are
done in Scotland, and Tim Hopkins of Scotland's gay and lesbian Equality
network said, "The law in Scotland is not something that should be bought or
sold by millionaires."
It seems that Souter and all of those who support Section 28 are careful to
deny that they are homophobic, to deny that the campaign is homophobic, and
in some cases even to speak out against discrimination and violence against
gays and lesbians. But activists who have long sought repeal don't see it
that way, and draw analogies to past racial segregation in the U.S.
So far the Scottish Executive has stood firm for repeal, which is supported
by the Opposition Scottish National Party as well as the ruling Labour Party.
Royal Assent for repeal is expected by June.
Also, when Conservatives asked the Edinburgh City Council this week for a
resolution in support of Section 28, the Council instead voted 41 - 12 to
support repeal. Edinburgh has already drafted new guidelines requiring
educators to document all instances of anti-gay harassment, whether verbal or
physical.
Two schools districts at opposite ends of the U.S. have this month adopted
anti-discrimination policies explicitly including sexual orientation as a
protected category.
In Alaska, thanks to lobbying by PFLAG -- Parents, Friends and Families of
Lesbians and Gays -- the Matanuska-Susitna school board voted 4 - 3 to add
sexual orientation to the policy of the state's second-largest school
district.
In Florida, the Leon County School Board voted 4 - 1 to add sexual
orientation to its policies against discrimination and harassment. The
amendment was brought to them by a 16-year-old gay student, who was praised
by the Board and cheered by a dozen other teens after the vote.
The Boy Scouts of America's ban on gays will be considered by the U.S.
Supreme Court. The Scouts are appealing an August ruling by the New Jersey
Supreme Court that they violated that state's Law Against Discrimination when
they ousted volunteer assistant scoutmaster James Dale only because he is
gay. The Scouts believe they are a private organization which should be
exempt from the civil rights law.
One famous U.S. Supreme Court decision endorsed the right of organizers of
a Saint Patrick's Day Parade to exclude an Irish gay and lesbian group from
marching as a unit. But this week an important community group in Ireland
chastized the organizers of New York City's Saint Patrick's Day Parade for
their decade-long exclusion of ILGO, the Irish Lesbian and Gay Organization.
The group organizing New York's parade, the Ancient Order of Hibernians, has
long participated in Ireland's annual Bloody Sunday Commemoration in Derry.
But in an open letter, the Commemoration Committee wrote that it "condemns
this discriminatory policy as being in direct contradiction of the ethos and
objectives of the original Bloody Sunday march ... which was specifically in
support of inclusiveness and equal rights for all." At that 1972 event,
British soldiers killed 13 participants in a peaceful demonstration for civil
rights in Northern Ireland. The Commemoration Committee called "on the AOH
in the U.S. to rescind its ban on ILGO forthwith and to respect the equal
right of Irish lesbians and gays to express their Irishness on Saint
Patrick's Day."
ILGO member Anne Maguire remarked that, "The AOH has long tried to justify
their bigotry by saying they represent Irish culture. This is a dose of
reality for them ... even their peers are telling them to get in step."
Italian gay and lesbian activists held their own commemoration this week,
the second anniversary of the fatal self-immolation of gay poet Alfredo
Ormando in Saint Peter's Square. Ormando's suicide note condemned the
oppression of gays and lesbians by the Roman Catholic Church. On January 13,
dozens of gays and lesbians laid a memorial wreath and created a rainbow flag
of flower petals. Speakers from the national group ArciGay remarked on the
Church's failure to open up to or apologize to gays and lesbians even in this
vaunted Jubilee Year when the Pope plans an apology for the Church's historic
errors. During the memorial demonstration, the Pope was nearby making yet
another speech opposing legal recognition of unmarried couples.
Legal recognition of gay and lesbian couples was the subject of testimony
this week before Vermont's House Judiciary Committee. This is the committee
charged with drafting legislation in response to the state's Supreme Court
decision last month, that all the benefits of marriage must be granted to
same-gender couples, whether by extending the marriage law or by establishing
parallel domestic partnerships. The first day of testimony included
attorneys for the plaintiff couples in the "Baker" case, a representative of
the state Attorney General's office that defended the state law in that case,
and a constitutional law professor. A very scholarly discussion ensued of
the differences between equal marriage rights and domestic partnerships. But
on the second day, two attorneys who had submitted a brief for the Catholic
Church and the Mormon church appeared with an attorney from the citizen's
group Take It To The People. All three felt the court had made a bad
decision and had exceeded its authority by telling the legislature what to
do. They advocated either ignoring the ruling altogether or beginning the
lengthy process for a constitutional amendment that would restrict marriage
exclusively to heterosexual couples.
And finally... after more than three years, one of the biggest secrets in
show business has been revealed: the biological father of the children of
openly lesbian rock star Melissa Etheridge and her partner filmmaker Julie
Cypher. The revelation came dramatically in a group photo on the cover of
"Rolling Stone" magazine. Cypher's sperm donor was veteran rocker David
Crosby, at the suggestion of his wife Jan. Crosby appealed to Etheridge
because of his musical ability and because he has a family of his own; he is
not parentally involved with Etheridge's and Cypher's children Bailey and
Beckett. Etheridge said she and Cypher had gotten tired of being pestered
about the secret, and hoped if they revealed it now it would be old news by
the time 3-year-old Bailey enters school. Crosby remarked, "Maybe it's a
good thing for a lot of straight families to see that this is not something
strange." Biological mother Cypher joked that, "No kitchen implements were
involved."